technical documentation

The increasing heterogeneity and complexity of industrial plant components from different manufacturers make it difficult to handle technical documentation consistently. In addition, the flexibility required for system changes challenges the long-term usability and legally compliant design of this documentation throughout the entire life cycle of cyber-physical production systems. This article contributes to the discussion on Technical Documentation 4.0 by systematically analyzing existing specifications and approaches and by proposing a concept for a holistic documentation framework.

In the context of Industry 4.0 the change and digitalisation of technical information move more closely in the focus of research. During the whole life cycle of a product, relevant information arises, that has to be stored appropriately. Future industrial applications require adaptive information management, e.g., individual and appropriate delivery of data, connection of information, target-oriented search or visualisation of information. The focus of this contribution is on challenges of the digitalization of technical documentations with respect to Industry 4.0 paradigms. The handling of the technical documentation over the complete lifecycle of a product is discussed.

Professionally developed technical documentation is not available since a long time and restricted to only a small range of products. Nevertheless requirements change quickly. Due to mighty tools like content management systems, translation memory software or editorial systems, being a technical editor becomes a high-tech job. Users expect information to be suited for different mobile devices like iPad or IPhone as well as for paper form. Manufacturers expect the creation process to be economical and legally reliable. How could this work out?

Today, intelligent cognitive systems are expected to provide the user at the machine with situation-dependent information in regard to the sequence of actions. The resulting requirements are analyzed in this paper and based on this, an information model is developed which is machine-oriented and computer-processable. With this information model not only the structural and functional aspects of the machine but also the actions of the user are described. By the situational extraction of relevant instructions according to the information model the machine user is supported in his decision making.